It’s 7 am and I’m half asleep as I totter to the fridge and open it to make breakfast.

My eyes take a moment to adjust to the bright light and focus.

I blink a few times and think, what in the hell is that?

There, proudly displayed front and center so that it’s the first thing I see is my husband’s semen sample.

How kind of him.

Instead of putting it discreetly in the top door compartment out of sight, he’s put it right in view, next to my favorite Jalna Greek natural yogurt.

“Visions of the blob haunt me”
I take out my yogurt and put a dollop on my muesli, trying not to think about what I’ve just seen.

I’m a mother of three for heaven’s sake. I’ve changed diarrhea explosions and navigated my way through my fair share of ickiness after all.

SemenA woman vomited after eating her yogurt due to her husband’s semen being placed right next to it in the refrigerator.

But as I start to munch on my breakfast, visions of the blob in the fridge haunt me.

The creamy, thick texture of the yogurt doesn’t help.

I run for the bathroom and vomit into the toilet.

What a way to start the day.

Despite the ill-placed semen specimen and my early morning hurl, I’m secretly thrilled that our contraception journey is almost at an end.

Though seeing the semen sample next to her yogurt was a shock for the wife, she was secretly happy because this was part of her husband’s vasectomy. Getty Images/iStockphoto
From the moment I became sexually active, I’ve had to be mindful of falling pregnant.

For years I was on the pill, but after my husband and I had our first child, I decided I wanted to avoid taking medication.

We ended up using the ‘rhythm method’, which is not overly reliable, as we soon discovered.

Our third baby was a wonderful surprise, but after her arrival, we were both on the same page about not wanting to have any more children.

When my husband offered to get the snip, I gladly encouraged him — but had no idea of what was to, ahem, come.

“His balls looked like over-ripe avocados”
Vasectomies are relatively common in Australia – in fact, Australia has the second-highest rate of the procedure in the world after New Zealand, with one in four men over 40 having one.

For some men, the prospect of getting a vasectomy can be daunting, but my husband found the procedure and recovery to be simple, seamless, and virtually pain-free (or at least, manageable with a few painkillers).

In the days after the procedure, his balls did get progressively darker and more swollen, to the point where they looked like two overripe avocados.

Eventually, everything healed and before long, we were back in the saddle – with caution.

“He’s meant to ejaculate 20 times” After a vasectomy, doctors advise men to ejaculate at least 20 times or wait about three months before having unprotected sex. Getty Images
For those who don’t know much about vasectomies, here’s how they work.

After the procedure, doctors advise men to ejaculate at least 20 times or wait about three months before having unprotected sex.

Before you do, you need a post-vasectomy semen analysis to check whether the procedure was effective.

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No sperm should be detected in at least two samples taken two to four weeks apart.

So, three months after his procedure, my husband got busy doing his homework, taking every opportunity to shoot off a load.

Probably the most embarrassing moment of his life happened when he was away for work and staying at an elderly relative’s house and decided to tick another one off the list.

He was going for it in the shower when his 85-year-old uncle walked in.

My husband called me mortified, and I tried to reassure him that maybe the old guy didn’t see anything or register what he was doing.

My husband said it was pretty obvious, after all, he was standing there in the cascading water with a raging hard-on.

Needless to say, he won’t be staying there again any time soon.

It’s been about 12 weeks since his vasectomy, and it’s time to find out whether the procedure was effective, hence the semen specimen.

It will be a nice feeling to be able to be intimate without the worry of contraception after so many years of it being back in my mind.

Though the doctor needed a post-vasectomy semen analysis to check whether the procedure was effective, the husband did not need to put it in the fridge. IStock
Reading up about post-vasectomy care, I realized my husband didn’t need to leave that gift in the fridge for me to discover this morning.

He was actually meant to get the sample to the pathology laboratory as soon after ejaculation as possible.

Thank you, husband. I’ve wasted my breakfast for nothing, and even more irritating – I might never look at Jalna yogurt the same.